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Thursday, June 29, 2017

There are three
keys to true negotiating success.If you
master these three keys, not only will you have much more success in
negotiating but you will be able to apply them to be a more effective leader.The three keys are Clarity, Detachment and
Equilibrium (CDE) and they are the fundamental framework of Authentic Negotiating.

Clarity: Authentic negotiators know what will
and won’t work for them on every significant term and what their true bottom
line is – from a place of clarity, not ego. In addition to doing the external preparation,
there is a body of internal work that great negotiators do to get aligned and
clear on their true objectives.

Detachment: Authentic negotiators can walk away
from a negotiation with no hesitation – not from a place of anger or upset, but
from a place of detachment with no judgment or hard feelings. They have a preference that the deal gets done
or they wouldn’t be taking the time to negotiate but they understand that the
only thing worse than not getting a deal done is doing a bad deal and they
trust that – whatever the outcomes – it’s for the best.

Equilibrium: Authentic negotiators don’t let
emotions dictate their actions, instead they maintain equilibrium during the
heat of tough negotiation to stay present and preserve their clarity and
detachment.They develop the tools and
practices that support them in not getting triggered or thrown off even during
heated negotiations or in the face of manipulative tactics.

As you can see,
authentic negotiating is a very different approach to negotiating.Unlike a lot of negotiating training which
focuses on tactics and countertactics (which are often manipulative and
ineffective and, even when good, do not get to the core of true negotiating
success), authentic negotiating focuses on the deep inner work that you need to
do to become a great negotiator.It is
only after doing that deep inner work that you then design an effective
negotiating strategy which comes from the place of CDE.

So how does
becoming an authentic negotiator relate to your leadership success?As illustrated above, great negotiating –
like great leadership – is a “state of being,” not a skill, and it’s important
to understand the distinction between the two.It’s like the difference between having a position of leadership and
being a true leader. You may have authority, but you’re not a true leader because
of any position or authority. A true
leader has people who are willing and excited to follow him or her; if you’re
just giving people orders, you are not actually leading them. So, if position
or authority don’t equal leadership, what does? What makes leadership is the
person: who he or she is and what I call his or her state of being. Attaining that state of being requires
internal work like self-awareness, being aligned, listening, connecting to
internal truth and communicating effectively.

It’s the same
thing in negotiating. What we’re talking about here is who you are when you
come into that negotiating room—who you are being? If you are being a person who
is clear, calm, collected, who doesn’t let your emotions adversely impact you,
and if you’re detached from the outcome, then you will be successful. If you
have all kinds of techniques, tactics and counter-tactics ready to go, but your
state of being is in fear, scarcity, upset, anger, rigidity—whatever it is—then
you are not going to be successful, no matter how many techniques you learn. The same is true in leadership.You can learn various leadership techniques
and tactics but the people you are attempting to lead know whether you are
authentic.They know whether you have
clarity on your vision, objectives and strategy.They know if you can be detached so that you
are flexible enough to be willing to change course if something is not working.They know if you stay calm and centered in
challenging times or if you lose your equilibrium.

So, learn to
attain and maintain CDE and become a great negotiator and a much better leader!

Thursday, June 22, 2017

For over three
decades, the Gallup organization has been conducting surveys to illuminate the
role leader’s play in creating a workforce of engaged employees to
organizational leadership. While this is admirable, it is even more impressive
to note that for over fifteen thousand
years, dogs have been humankind’s constant companion and an observer of our
progress from the epochs of hunter-gatherer, agriculturalist, industrialism, to
the current knowledge era. Since dogs
have been our close companions for so many millennia, let’s consider what
advice they might give us to serve as more effective leaders.

1.Demonstrate
loyalty. When we ask dog owners what
they like about dogs, one of the first qualities they identify is that dogs are
unfailingly loyal. Dogs bond with their families and stick with them through
thick and thin. Loyalty is also of key importance to leaders and organizational
success. In fact, the mark of an effective leader is the ability to influence
others to accomplish worthy goals; this requires loyalty to the desired
outcome. Tip from Fido: Don’t gossip
about others who are not present and treat all employees fairly and with
respect.

2.Maintain
a positive attitude. Dogs are just about the most positive creature on Earth. My
dog Panda views every outing as an opportunity to explore the world. An
effective leader is definitely more of the ‘glass half full’ instead of the
‘glass half empty’ kind of person who projects a sincere positive attitude that
others find contagious and inspiring. Tip from Fido: Starting tomorrow, begin
each day or meeting not by bemoaning what went wrong, but by recognizing what
is working well and for what you are grateful.

3.Communicate
clearly. A friend observed that dogs
have ‘crystal hearts.’ By this, he meant that dogs communicate clearly and
without guile; what you see is what you get. Humans, on the other hand, often intentionally
say one thing and mean something else. Effective leaders communicate clearly
and ensure that the message is offered in the right tone, through the most
effective medium, and is received accurately. Tip from Fido: Don’t wag your
tail as you growl, and don’t whimper when you need to bark. Say what you mean;
don’t obfuscate your message intentionally deceive and mislead. Ensure there
are clear channels for accurate communication up and down the chain of command.

4.Be
playful. One of the qualities we admire most in our dogs is their unconcealed
joy in engaging with us in play. Whether it is going for a walk, throwing a
ball, playing tug-of-war, swimming, or jogging, our dogs love playing with us. Research
is clear that happy, playful work environments are more productive than those
that are drab and dreary. Employees respond far better to the carrot than the
stick. Tip from Fido: Encourage creative, playful problem-solving and
brainstorming. Actively support employee
play in the form of bowling, softball, fun runs, ping pong, dress-up days, and
other fun events that foster connection and engagement.

5.Be
forgiving. Step on your dog’s tail and they will yelp, but forgive you
immediately. Is that true in your workplace? When someone feels slighted (whether
real or imagined) does the resulting animosity fester and destroy productivity,
communication, and efficiency? Good leaders ‘get over it’ and recognize that
people- themselves included- make mistakes. Tip from Fido: Recognize that no
one is perfect; learn from and forgive mistakes. Be humble and apologize when
you are wrong and accept apologies from others.

6.Love
what you do. Unconditional love; it is the hallmark of what makes a dog
humankind’s best friend. Race, creed, color, sexual preference, religion, body
type, and age don’t matter to your dog; they still love being with you. Effective
leaders demonstrate clear passion for what they do and appreciate the passion
and success of others. Tips from Fido: Pay attention, reward and recognize the
achievements of others. Let them know both publically and privately what they
did and how much you value their contribution. Demonstrate an honest
appreciation for diversity in everything you do.

7.Live
a balanced life. Dogs seem particularly adept at living a balanced life. Panda
appears to have a wonderful sense for knowing when to transition between
sleeping, playing, eating, or just engaging with other dogs and people. Our culture tends to demand that we focus on
‘getting results’ at the expense of all other aspects of our lives. Great
leaders recognize that ‘results’ are important, but how one attains those results is vital to long term creativity,
productivity, and effectiveness. Tip from Fido: Reflect on how you are spending
your time; set aside adequate time for family, friends, your own personal
health, professional and spiritual growth? Intervene when you notice a well intentioned
employee is burning themselves out trying to contribute to the organization.

You may have seen the magic
trick called the Chinese Locking Rings in which a magician holds up several
separate rings and then ‘magically’ appears to link them all together. Our dogs
would remind us that truly effective leaders recognize that the seven qualities
discussed above may appear separate, but in reality, they are all highly
interconnected. Separately, each has value; together they define the difference
between mediocre and outstanding leadership. Perhaps dogs know us better than
Gallup!

Garry McDaniel and Sharon Massen are professors at
Franklin University and speak nationally on what individuals and organizations
can learn from dogs about leadership, team building, and customer service. Their
latest book is,The Dog’s Guide to Your Happiness: Seven
Secrets for a Better Life from Man’s Best Friend. Garry and Sharon invite
you to contribute stories about what you have learned from your dog that has
positively enhanced your view on personal, family or professional
relationships. Please send your stories or insights to Garry and Sharon at http://www.happydogsecrets.com or by
calling 614-657-8524.

Thursday, June 15, 2017

Leadership is about
one thing: influencing adult behavior. Ironically, that’s one of the most
difficult human actions to accomplish.

In our positions as
leaders—whether that’s as a manager, owner, coach or something less
traditional—our daily task is to influence the decisions of those under our
charge. We’re tasked with the job of bending their wills and actions to the
benefit of the greater good of our business or cause. But adults are
free-thinking, strong-willed beings. Unlike children, their minds aren’t
malleable sponges, and these old dogs are often reluctant to learn new tricks.

That’s not to say
that it can’t be done. I’ve spent the past 30 years in leadership roles and,
over the past [decade?], in leadership development through the Mann Group.
Through my courses like Mann U, I’ve helped some of the country’s largest
specialty retailers and manufacturers run well and, most importantly, lead
well.

These “students” I
get to mentor are the best of the best when it comes to leadership, and yet, they’re
not perfect. They all site troublesome employees who just don’t listen and
share stories of how changing their actions was often seemingly impossible.
Over the years, their notes prompted me to look more closely into how exactly
adult behavior change works.

As it turns out, the
steps to influence are not some complex algorithm, but just straightforward,
intentional movements.

The first step in
influence, for example, is simple: establish context.

What does that mean?
It means that in order to influence others, you need to start with yourself.
Ask yourself this elementary questions: what’s your cause?

Before you begin to
train anyone else, you need to be very clear on what it is you’re trying to
establish in them and why. This doesn’t have to be some grand vision or life
plan (although it certainly can be); it just needs to make sense to you, so it
can make sense to the people you’re influencing. Once you have a clear vision
of your intention, it’s possible to share it with others and to translate into
a language they can understand. It’s impractical and actually impossible to
influence the behavior of others if you’re not direct in your intention; you
get distracted and a clear message is hidden behind other ideas. But when you
approach influence with a clear and concise objective, you can package it into
digestible bites for your employees or “students.”

So once you’ve
established your own cause, you can build context for your trainee. And this is
where those stubborn wills come into play.

When you’re trying
to influence someone, their initial reaction will differ inherently from that
of a child because they won’t just take what you say at face value. In fact,
they may not want to listen at all; they could be distracted or purely
argumentative.

As adults, their gut
reaction will be to question the influence you’re trying to sway over them.
Understand that questions like “ What are we working on?” “Why are we working
on it?” “How long will this take?” and “What’s in it for me?” will inevitably be
circulating through their minds. Whether they speak them out loud or not, your
students are asking them, and failing to address them is fatal to effectively
changing their behavior long term.

That’s why being so
clear in your cause is integral to effective influence. Because you’ve
already established your objective internally, you can effectively address each
of these questions. When you’re clear in your own objectives, it’s easy to
persuade your students of the validity of your cause.

Answering these questions—like
what they’re doing and why—doesn’t just convince your student that it’s
worthwhile, which immediately changes their perspective and gains their
attention. It also establishes trust, which is the trademark of
long-term influence. You’re no longer a monarch demanding attention from your
subjects; you’ve set yourself on equal footing, and your student is more likely
to respect and incorporate your ideas into his own objectives.

At the outset of
your training, establish what you’re doing, why you’re there, how long it will
take and what your student will gain. Be clear in your cause so they can be
too. Once you’ve prepped them for the benefits of the training about to take
place, actual influence can occur.

About the author:

Influencing adult
behavior is perfectly possible, you just have to understand how. Dan Mann is a
30 year veteran of leadership and leadership training. His new book, ORBiT:The Art & Science of Influence, offers a six-step system for
influencing adult behavior. To learn the five steps that follow “Establish
Context,” visit OrbitInfluence.com to pick up your copy of Dan’s new book.

Thursday, June 8, 2017

In 2013, the National Center for Biotechnology Information
reported that the average attention
span of a human has dropped to a mere eight seconds, one second behind that of a goldfish. Why does this matter?
Distraction in the digital era has become an epidemic, robbing us of our focus,
decreasing our productivity and hindering our overall life satisfaction. Our
jobs today are “interrupt-driven,” with distractions not just a plague on our
work—sometimes they can mean the difference between success and failure.

As New York Times Magazine’s Clive Thompson writes,
“Information is no longer a scarce resource—attention is.” In this Digital Era
where work/home/play are blended together, we may not always have a choice
about our work schedules or our work priorities; however, there are powerful things
that we can do to regain a sense of control about our happiness at work.

2.Know your stats. The average person
checks his phone 150 times every day. If
every distraction took only one minute (a seriously optimistic estimate), that
would account for 2.5 hours of distraction every day. That’s 912.5 hours a
year, or roughly thirty-eight days each year. Knowing your stats
increases your awareness so that you can make proactive choices about how you
spend your time and energy. Download the Unplugged app to see how many times you turn on your phone each day and how you
are using your time.

3.Tell others what you are
really doing. When you need to step away from
technology to focus, set a short-term auto-responder explaining what you are
really doing and when you will be back (i.e., I’m stepping away from my email
to finish this project. I’ll be back in one hour). This small gesture
communicates to others that you value them, but you also value your work (of
course this only works if you are actually using your time productively). If
you worry about how such a message will be perceived, fear not. Many employers
are actually thrilled that you want to focus more (and even inspired by your
initiative to communicate this because they secretly want to do the same
thing).

4.Hide your phone. We have become joined at the hip with our phones—afraid to step
back from this electronic umbilical cord for fear that someone might need us
for something. However, recent research shows that the mere presence of a cellphone can
decrease your productivity and attention on cognitively demanding tasks. Chances are that seeing every text message, email, or
social media alert as it comes in won’t make you more productive, and it
certainly won’t make you happier. To focus on your work, move your cellphone
out of your line of sight (put it in your bag, behind your computer screen, or
in a drawer); if that’s not possible, at the very least, turn off nonessential
notifications. You also can get noise-canceling headphones to help you focus.

5.Use the “Really?!” Rule. When you find yourself tempted to use technology to zone
out at work for a bit, stop and ask yourself: Does this tech truly make me
happier and/or more productive? For instance, does taking my phone to the
break room really rejuvenate your mind or does it prevent you from connecting
with your colleagues? A recent study of 450 workers in Korea found that individuals who
took a short work break without their cellphones felt more vigor and less
emotional exhaustion than individuals who
toted their cellphones along with them on their breaks, regardless of whether
they actually used the phone!If you find yourself using tech to
zone out rather than to tune in, try to shift your behavior to use your time in
a way that will genuinely fuel your long-term happiness and productivity.

By practicing these happy hacks in your life, you can learn to
manage distraction in the digital era and set yourself up for a future of
greater happiness and well-being in the long run.

Amy Blankson has become one of the world’s
leading experts on the connection between positive psychology and technology.
She is the only person to be named a Point of Light by two U.S. presidents for
creating a movement to activate positive culture change. A sought-after speaker
and consultant, Amy has now worked with organizations like Google, NASA, the US
Army, and the Xprize Foundation to help foster a sense of well-being in the
Digital Era. Amy received her BA from Harvard and MBA from Yale School of Management.
Most recently, she was a featured professor in Oprah’s Happiness course. Amy is
the author of two books: The Future of Happiness and an award-winning children’s book called Ripple’s
Effect.

Thursday, June 1, 2017

The great lament of so many leaders and managers today is
that “no one is loyal anymore.” With millions of millennials pegged as “job
hoppers” who “leave before they even get productive,” older managers are
increasingly unwilling to put in the effort to help develop and train their
younger colleagues. The logic goes – “why should I put my effort into helping
these people when they’re just going to leave me and I’ll have to start all
over again.”

Oh, the good old days, when people stayed where you wanted
them for as long as you wanted them to and retired with a golden watch and some
balloons.

Yeah. Those good old days are long gone, if they ever
existed at all. And not because people changed, but because companies stopped
honoring the implicit contract that permeated American business: you work hard
and the company will take care of you. Employees today know that they can’t
count on a company to take care of them, and that they need to craft their own
career with building blocks of job experiences that keep them relevant, and
increasingly valuable. Add to that their desire to be both interested in and
satisfied with the impact of their work.

The old loyalty paradigm is dead, and it’s time for us to
switch from measuring employee loyalty by length of employment, to an entire
career lifetime regardless of whether a paycheck is involved or not. This is
the Boomerang Principle: the belief that organizations that allow and encourage
former employees to return have a strategic advantage over those that don’t.

Consider these points to help prepare you for this new
mindset:

●When you hire someone, you know they
are going to leave you. Instead of worrying about when they’re going to leave,
focus on helping your employees be as valuable as possible while they’re with you;

●It’s unlikely that one organization could offer the
range of opportunities – skills, positions, locations, terms, or dynamics –
that every employee will want over the course of their careers. Instead of
treating former employees as “dead to you,” consider the skills that they will
gain away from your company and figure out how you can get them to return when
they are more valuable to you in the future;

●With every former employee, you have the opportunity to
INCREASE your footprint in the business world. Creating an environment and
relationship that keeps former employees informed and attached to your company
can pay off in exponential ways after they leave you in terms of potential
clients, partners and advocates in the industry and community. Better to have
people proud of their association with you, than actively preferring not to
recommend your company as an employer or a provider.

●When you create a “culture of return”
you create a “culture to remain.” Environments that are worthy to return to –
where people are welcomed to return – are generally more positive, more
high-performing, more productive and more profitable than those that aren’t.
These types of positive organizations are hard to leave just to leave, and have
much lower employee turnover rates than those organizations that treat their
former employees as pariahs.

And now, how can you create a culture of return? Here are 5
steps to creating a Boomerang culture.

1.Kill the counter
offer: Stop countering people with higher salaries when they tell you they
are leaving. Don’t do it. Instead treat people who are moving on to different
opportunities well and welcome them to return in the future if the time is
right. Fellow employees know when a business counters exiting employees, and it
creates an incredibly negative dynamic and resentment among teams. Stop feeding
any negativity you can.

2.Stay connected
in real, meaningful ways: Stay in touch with your former employees. If you
haven’t done this in a while, make a list of the people who left your company
in the last 24 months. Over the next six to twelve months, reconnect with all
of them in some way – from meeting for dinner to connecting on LinkedIn. Show
interest in where they are and what they’re doing.

3.Insist on and
train great managers: Make sure your managers are actively involved in
their team members’ development plans. Reward managers for helping their
colleagues to succeed and reach their own goals. When organizations are
demonstrably invested in their employees, people feel more loyalty towards them
and are more willing to make good things happen in the workplace.

4.Start a
company-sponsored alumni program: If you can’t create your own online
platform, start with a private Facebook group with your former employees and
current team leaders in it. Share company updates, learning opportunities and
discounts or other opportunities with your alumni. Ask your alumni for their
recommendations for people to fill open positions; reward every referral with a
token of appreciation. When you keep a relationship going with your former
employees, they are more apt to recommend your company as a vendor, partner or
employer – this shortens recruiting, biz dev and sales cycles by many cycles.

5.Tout the quality
of the staff you’ve had: You’ve created a great thing here, be proud of
that. Showcase your company alumni in the alumni network. Post interviews with
former employees that detail their current positions and lives; ask them to
comment on how their time with your company prepared them for their current
jobs. The more you demonstrate that you’re proud that they are proud of their
time with you, the more valuable you become to your former, current and future,
employees.

Thinking about and then putting in place mechanisms that
help you inspire employees to be loyal to your organization for their entire
careers – not just their tenure – is a paradigm shifting exercise. By applying
the Boomerang Principle – the belief that organizations that allow and encourage
their former employees to return have a strategic advantage over those that
don’t – your company will increase happiness in the workplace – happiness that
translates right down to the bottom line.